Yesterday, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) delivered a sweeping indictment of the White House’s political tactics in a speech at the Brookings Institution. “Instead of promoting solutions to our nation’s broad challenges, the Bush Administration used all the levers of power to promote their party and its narrow interests,” Emanuel explained. He added that the Bush gang lives by a “guiding principle… insinuating partisan politics into every aspect of government.”
ABC News published an item on the speech with this headline: “Emanuel’s Conspiracy Theory.” White House spokesperson Dana Perino mocked Emanuel during yesterday’s press briefing, insisting that his comments sound like something from “the National Enquirer,” and accusing Emanuel of “creating grand conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.”
I had thought we were well past this point. Are there serious people in our political system who believe the White House isn’t incorporating partisan politics into every aspect of government? We can debate whether this is a tragedy for our democracy or not, but the fact that it’s happening is beyond question, isn’t it?
In case the editors at ABC News and the White House press office are still confused, there’s a front-page item in the WaPo today that should help spell things out for them.
White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.
The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.
The existence of one such briefing, at the headquarters of the General Services Administration in January, came to light last month, and the Office of Special Counsel began an investigation into whether the officials at the briefing felt coerced into steering federal activities to favor those Republican candidates cited as vulnerable.
This isn’t a “conspiracy theory”; it’s White House policy. It gets back to the notion of “Kremlin justice” we talked about last week, in which the Bush administration (i.e., Karl Rove’s office) sought to subvert democracy by using the power of the executive branch exclusively as a tool to protect the ruling party.
Of course, all of these efforts are illegal.
Such coercion is prohibited under a federal law, known as the Hatch Act, meant to insulate virtually all federal workers from partisan politics. In addition to forbidding workplace pressures meant to influence an election outcome, the law bars the use of federal resources — including office buildings, phones and computers — for partisan purposes.
But the Bush gang has its spin ready.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel … said that Rove “occasionally spoke to political appointees at departments and agencies” but that his presentations were more “off the cuff” and were meant to convey “their importance to advancing the president’s agenda.”
Sure, of course. The White House political office would casually arrange for laid-back meetings at 15 executive branch agencies, everything from NASA to HHS to the Small Business Administration to Homeland Security. At these briefings, Rove or one of his acolytes would explain to hundreds of federal employees, at their workplaces, exactly which Republican candidates were vulnerable and in need of support. The same briefings would emphasize which Democratic candidates were being targeted, and where the GOP challenger could use a hand.
All of these briefings were held shortly before a congressional election.
Rove & Co. never explicitly instructed federal employees to take specific actions on behalf of GOP candidates, because that would obviously violate the Hatch Act. Instead, they’d just lead the horse to water, and tell the horse how incredibly important it was for him to drink. If the horse suddenly started drinking the water, that certainly wasn’t Rove’s fault.
The administration maintains that the previously undisclosed meetings were appropriate. Those discussing the briefings on the record yesterday uniformly described them as merely “informational briefings about the political landscape.”
What a coincidence. All of these employees were using the exact same phrase … almost as if they’d be instructed on exactly what to say when asked about the administration’s illegal political operation.
As Paul Kiel explained, “The entire scheme has been laid out before us. The question now is whether Karl Rove will get away with it.”